1. Field of the Description
The present invention relates, in general, to amusement or theme park rides (often simply called “rides” herein) and illumination of the set or physical scenery surrounding or nearby the ride path, and, more particularly, to systems for selectively illuminating physical scenery in rides so as to provide differing sets of passengers on the rides differing ride experiences including visual experiences that are unique to each of the sets of passengers (even when within a single ride vehicle).
2. Relevant Background
Amusement and theme parks remain extremely popular with many thousands of people visiting these parks every year. Visitors experience a variety of attractions including rides, walk through attractions, shows, and the like. To encourage enjoyment and attendance, it can be beneficial for an attraction to provide variability in experiences so that a visitor can have multiple difference experiences on the same attraction.
For example, water-based rides may vary with each ride with the water spraying or soaking riders in a relatively random manner. In other cases, a ride experience may vary based on the rider's location in a car or train of vehicles (e.g., are you in the lead car of a roller coaster or toward the rear of the coaster train?). However, many attractions have elaborate and detailed physical scenery that has not been designed to readily change in a manner that supports experience variability.
Another approach to increasing enjoyment is to personalize the experience. For example, a ride might be operated to identify a rider, such as one having their birthday, and to provide the identified rider a personalized experience such as by announcing their name as they pass a location and so on. Similar to personalization, a ride may be operated to provide “group appropriateness” such as by attempting to give younger riders a youth-oriented experience while providing teenagers and adults a more mature experience. However, it has often been difficult for ride designers to provide differing experiences within a single ride. For example, it is a difficult challenge to design a ride so as to increase or decrease thrill or to vary imagery displayed to the riders (e.g., show bad guys or scary images to teenagers while showing good guys or much less scary images to children) as they move along a track through a themed ride. In addition to the difficult task of changing configuration of the elaborate scenery, segregating the audience is difficult and can interfere with families and friends enjoying an attraction together.
Hence, there remains a need for new ride or attraction designs or systems that facilitate personalization and selective variance of the ride or attraction experience. Preferably, such designs and/or systems are useful with existing rides and attractions as well as with completely new rides or experiences.